Praise God, I hurt my back!

I was trying to clean the dead algae out of our above-ground pool on Saturday, hoping to keep from having to empty the pool and refill it. The dead algae powder is so fine that the pool filter can’t get it out of the water, and the leaf-vacuum bag doesn’t sift it either.

As I was laying in bed half-asleep one night last week, the brilliant (I thought) idea came to me to use a pillowcase to filter the water. So I found an old unmatched pillowcase and threaded a wire hanger through the top seam to keep it open while in the water.

Common sense should have told me how stupid this plan was. A pillowcase full of water is quite heavy, obviously heavier than this back can handle, especially when the pillowcase is being held away from and to the side of the body. I was happily dragging this very heavy bag of water (which only continued to get bigger because the pillowcase was made out of stretchy T-shirt material) through the water, I twisted wrong just once, and CRACK!! – It was all over.

Saturday evening I could hardly walk. Movement of any kind was excruciating. But I couldn’t help laughing through the pain at my own stupidity and the goodness of God in opening my eyes to see yet another area of pride in my life.

My husband has struggled with back issues for the last few years. During the times of his worst pain, I’ve tried to say and do all of the appropriate things, but in my heart of hearts, I really thought he was being a big baby and making a bigger deal of it than it really was.

Sunday afternoon I was sitting on the couch in our family room, and I looked at my husband and said “Sweety, I repent of every horrible, wicked, thoughtless, prideful word I have ever said or thought about your back pain.”

Mind you, the pain I was experiencing, as bad as it was, was only a shadow of the pain he has endured. When I went to the doctor on Monday, they did a bunch of tests and concluded that there wasn’t any actual damage to my spine, but only to the muscle tissue in my lower back, and that it should heal quite nicely on its own.

It’s been It’s been four days now, and my back is probably about 70% better. The best things about this experience have been feeling the closeness and the presence of God, being prayed for by wonderful friends at church on Sunday, and learning just a little bit more how to recognize the voice of pride in my heart.

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It’s officially been an entire week since I last checked my blog or anyone else’s. (Thank you, Lord!) The temptation the first few days was very powerful, but as the week went on, it got easier to look for other things to do. My kids and I played some games together, our family watched movies together, and I’ve actually managed to cook a real dinner for my family almost every day. These are just baby steps, of course, but it feels good.